My mother said
There is thrift,
and there is thrift.
By which she meant:
warmed up, redressed,
some leftovers still
will not pass the test.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Stone
Stone of petty accusation, stone that rolls
from year to year increasing in volume
and dumb heft— You do not look good
in the garden. You do not look good,
not even as a paperweight.
In response to small stone (259).
Incise, impress:
on every skin that envelopes the body—
Dress, touch, glance; brief kiss
that nicks at the hinge or join;
welt fine as lace or flushed
as copper in the fire.
In response to thus: in progress.
Small birds fly past,
then vanish into fog.
This way the days too
disappear, and then
come back.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Textile
“… dusty fields. A white sun above. All this road, going.” ~ Dorothee Lang
The line is a thread. The thread is a piece in a weft of fabric. The thread pushed forward and back by the bobbin, from a pin, from an implement that pushes the furrows and turns the field into rows and rows. Today I listened to the radio story on two sisters, factory pieceworkers in Bangladesh. How the older one was married off to a man chosen by her parents because they thought he would be able to provide. The reporter said she didn’t laugh anymore. She is maybe 23, has a daughter, 7 years old, cared for by others in the village. But she talks about not wanting to visit the family home because she is angry at her parents who have ruined her life. The reporter says I am sorry, I made you cry. The younger sister did not have to do the same thing— by the time she hit her teens, there was one other choice besides arranged marriage: go to work in the factory. I see in my mind’s eye hundreds of girls like her, thousands, washing in the commons behind the building, twisting their damp hair into knots. Think of shadows in the alleys interrupted by the fluttering flags of laundry hanging from tenement windows. The soot on the walls from their kerosene lamps, the meal they will share, sitting on their haunches on the floor. A curtain doubles as a door, doubles as a wall, a screen. But there is a TV. And a cellphone. They talk about how they make T-shirts: what stitches, what seams, how the collar must come to a point at the bottom of the V. Endless days like these. Like a road they hope will take them somewhere better. Every now and then a torn fingernail, close brush with the needle and the cutter. One of the girls thinks with a start of the thousand bodies folded and crushed, thin as cloth beneath stone. She was only thinking of the rhinestone earrings she bought at the market stall, of wearing it on the next free day, an outing at the coast.
In response to Via Negativa: Four Blogs from Germany.
Evidence
Dark heap on the snow where a squirrel husked a walnut.
Scent of Pine-sol lingering in rooms not yet filled.
Half a pair of chopsticks hidden in the knife drawer.
Garden rake on a store shelf of soil cultivators.
Vent hole beneath the eaves through which the house might breathe.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Prayer for Wings
Lord let it rain
as it must from time
to time, but only grant
the gentleness of wings
to us beneath the trees
so heavy with their golden
fruit, so far away from us
so close to mud and earth—
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Epistle of the bird
Don’t beat your head
against the dead tree:
the sun will not return
any faster; rather, mind
the insects spilling out—
proof that an empty purse
may yet have currency
left over in the lining.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Dear one, anxious again about arrival—
do not be disheartened by the appearance
of yet another detour: that there is road work
suggests this path has not been abandoned yet,
or that it is time to look more closely
at the establishments that line this section
of the map— Not everyone perhaps is an hija
de puta, a heartless bruja, a bitch only waiting
to trip you up or put you in what she assumes
is your place. So she was born with a silver
spoon in her mouth, a blingety-bling in her nose
ring, her father’s stocks to cover her precious
behind? Ya qué? Remember what your grand-
father used to say about their kind: just close
your eyes and think about all the ugly and unkind,
all the beautiful, snooty ones who live in their cold,
drafty mansions with no one to love, no one who loves
them back except for the miserly crumb of a saltine
cracker beside their bag of tea; and think about
how everyone on this earth is reduced to that common
denominator of skin beneath these artificial layers,
how the fat around the waist dimples then folds
as the body strains on the pot to expel its daily
load of crap— Take a look around and see who else
is on this pilgrimage: you’d be surprised at how many
are inching along, making clearings, hefting their dollar-
store supplies, their thrift store finds, their non-
designer bags filled with an assortment of viable dreams.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Sposalizio
In the night, yellow
bloom of a witch hazel
caught
in the architecture
of ice—
I can see you,
your furled banners,
your rings
of startling gold,
the city streets
swept clean
of the usual traffic;
the heart its own
edifice
thrust
into open space.
In response to Via Negativa: Learning from the Ice.